Hair the Colour of Lemons
by Ozy the Talking Haystack
Summary: It is 1943, and Germany wakes from a dream into a nightmare. Alone and bewildered in a bombed and war-torn city, he stumbles upon the sight of a boy, a girl, and Death. Axis Powers Hetalia/"The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak. Warning: TBT SPOILERS!
1. Chapter 1

Author's notes: This is meant to be short, and as such only has two parts. I'm trying to get back into writing fanfiction again (after having a creative block that lasted for the longest time) so please bear with me, I WILL continue "These Plains of Abraham" soon. In any case, there are multiple spoilers for the ending of Markus Zusak's "The Book Thief", so YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Without further ado, I hope you enjoy this fic. Translations wiill be provided at the bottom.

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><p>Pt 1: <em>Erwachen<em> (_Awakening)._

I can taste it, like metal…like copper. There is a flash of red, then black again. _Lieber Gott, _how am I still breathing? I can't move. There are a lot of red flashes now and it _hurts. _Something small and rough is sitting on my tongue_._ The light is filtering through my eyelids, no wonder I feel like I'm dead. Wake up. This is a nightmare, it has to be, wake up wake up WAKE UP!

My eyelashes are matted together. Can I move my arms? Are they broken? Have I been broken? The sirens are screaming nearby but they all say the same thing. _Too late. Too late._ Like a miracle, my hands rise to my face and pry the lids apart, and it's still dark, but not like before. The fingers shift up and touch my hair but something feels sticky and I can taste copper again.

Where am I?

Breathe in. Breathe out. Don't panic. First of all, my neck doesn't appear to be broken. Sit up. Sit up, even if it hurts. Good. I spit, and something small and wet dropped into my lap. Why is there a rock in my mouth? Never mind. There's something dripping into my eye and it stings. I go to wipe them with the back of my hand, but there is a sudden pain, like the bite of a dog. My hand tears away from my forehead on its own, and I lick the stickiness to find out what…copper. Blood. I need to get out of here. Move. I cannot die, so why am I afraid? Move. I can hear thuds, and screaming nearby. Move. Your people need you. Move, _Deutschland_ MOVE.

I remember a story Japan told me once. He was walking and the earth was ripped out from under his feet like somebody pulled a rug out from under him. Is that what happened here? My feet are fragile as they stretch out on the floor, and the cool dirt clings to my toes. They support the towers of my legs, then the rest of me. Pain gnaws at my side and my head. I try to take a step forward, and my foot glances off of something hard and jagged, like a piece of cement. Flailing hands, ghost-white and red, catch themselves on a smooth wall, miraculously still in one piece.

Sickly red light filters in through…something nearby. It looks like bars cast on the floor, with shape, but no form. Using the wall as a guide, I start towards it, until my support suddenly comes to an unexpected and jagged end. I fall through the dark and my outstretched fingers land in the light while everything else lands on a pile of splinters and plaster. The wind is knocked out of me. Something sticks into my arm. My own short, sharp cry of pain, like an animal, echoes through the dark.

Move, _Deutschland. _

I struggle to my feet. The nail tears a hole in my arm as the board it's attached to falls to the ground with a clatter. The air is cooler here, and I blink at the unexpected brightness of the sky, which is a thick, soupy red. There's a gap in the rubble, but it may not be big enough to fit. There are no more thuds. There's no more anything now. Even the sirens have stopped.

"_Hilfe!" _My voice is choked with plaster dust. "_Hilfe!" _Nobody comes. I am alone again, as usual. It hurts the worst of all when I'm straining to get through and the boards prod my flesh like spikes. It's hard to hang on with my left hand because the blood from this new wound makes the boards slippery. Time is ticking away as I finally breathe in air tainted with smoke and roll onto the flat earth. Breathe in, though it burns your lungs. The screaming has started up again.

Where am I? How did I get here? The last thing I remember is being on patrol and seeing the lights of the city. It was night then…wait, it's still night. Everything is red now, bathed in red light. I can't see the stars because the sky is red, seared with grey smoke and smeared with sooty-looking clouds.

Your people need you. Move, _Deutschland_, before you bleed yourself white.

It's easier to get up now, but my head still burns and my arm is really starting to sting. The blood that was on my forehead is still dripping into my eyes, but not as much now. It's just a matter of wiping your eyes, taking a good look at your surroundings and-

Oh.

_Oh Mein Gott_, I'm in Hell.

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><p><em>Lieber Gott - <em>Dear God

_Deutschland_ - Germany

_Hilfe - _Help


	2. Chapter 2

Pt. 2: _Entdeckung__(Discovery)_

Is this Germany?

I cannot speak. I cannot even scream.

I had felt the shuddering blows from bombs that had fallen earlier on this land, in a different time. I saw the bruises they caused on my own skin. I felt the pain of lives suddenly severed by the dagger of _too soon_. I heard their cries of anguish, of anger as to what their leader, their madman, had lead them into. I had seen this carnage before, in London as I fought Britain hand to hand among the ruined houses for the privilege of owning his land, of controlling him.

But it never occurred me that what I had done to his people, he was now doing to mine.

The only landmark that I see is a sign, face up, lying flat on the road. _Himmel_. The name of the street I was now standing on. I swallow a choked sob. This was no heaven.

The next thing I see is my reflection in a pane of glass that miraculously, though cracked, had remained intact in one of the nearby houses. I turn my head, and there I am, staring back at me. There is an angry, throbbing gash on my forehead, which arcs and ends just above my left eye. My hair is matted with dirt and blood. I blink as I realize dully just how close I had come to becoming blind. My jacket and the legs of my pants are torn and soaked with blood from my head and arm. With a start, I realize that my boots are gone. There's so much shattered glass on the ground, how have I not shredded the soles of my feet?

It is only moments later that I see the first corpse.

She lies on the ground, still intact, with her skin torn to shreds and red from the cooling blood. She is an older woman, her hair grey and falling out of the bun at the nape of her neck. Her face is calm, not shocked, so she must have been sleeping when the bombs killed her. I kneel down beside her. I have to know.

Sudden screams ricochet from further up the street. I look up and see that rescuers are pulling out a bony, blonde-haired girl from the wreckage of a house. Alive. He screams echo through the wreckage. "Papa! Papa!"

I turn back to the woman in front of me and quietly place my right hand on her temple. In a flash, I have her story in my hands. She is Gertrude Holtzapfel, a mother with two boys. I rock back on my heels, recognizing the names. They had fought Russia alongside me. One I knew was dead. What happened to the other one, Micheal?

My hand, almost involuntarily, reaches out to her temple again. I close my eyes. I see black at first, then a thin, white silhouette. A rope, tight, with a figure dangling at the end of it. Micheal Holtzapfel had hung himself with a rope of Stalingrad snow.

I jump back, and crouch to the ground, the bile scorching my throat as it crawls up my throat and splashes out onto the earth, dampened by her blood. I wretch. _This can't be happening_, even as I wipe my mouth and spit.

Shakily, I stand to my feet, feeling my sanity slowly sliding off of me. I clench my fists to keep it in place. _Your people need you. Start walking, Deutschland. And watch your step._

There are so many bodies, so many, with more being carried out of the rubble by rescuers. I know. My heart is heavy. There is no one else to rescue. The blonde-haired girl would be the only survivor here…

I hear a crash behind me. I look back to see her. There is an instrument, an accordion, at her feet. She had just seen Frau Holtzapfel.

I continue to walk, but she suddenly rushes past me, screaming "Rudy!" I look up from where I am watching my step and see what she is running towards. The rescuers have just pulled out another body and are gently laying it down on the earth. A boy with hair the colour of lemons. With a sudden, unexpected spurt of panic, I see that Death is standing above him. There is a colour perched on his…her…its shoulders. Deep blue this time, a welcome relief from the soupy red of a fire-seared sky. It looks up and sees the girl, but I know it would not realize I was there. Death can only see what can die.

Something is pulling me towards them. I don't want to go, but I owe them this much.

I stand a few feet away, observing. She is kneeling on the ground beside him now, shaking him. "Rudy, please." She has him by the shirt front now. Tears are streaming from her brown eyes.

_Wait…brown?_ I look at the two of them and in a moment I know both of their stories. His name was Rudy Steiner. He was a boy that wished for a kiss from her, who excelled at school and athletics, who once covered himself completely with coal dust just so that he could be like Jesse Owens. If his eyes were open, they would have been blue. He was likeable. He was loveable.

He looks like me.

I stagger back in shock even as words like a river flow out of the girl's mouth. Her name was Liesel Meminger, now Hubermann. She was a girl who was torn away from her parents because they had been Communists and was placed into her new family. She loved her papa most of all. She had stolen words, and she had given them back into a black notebook that she had dropped beside the boy.

And her eyes look like Italy's.

"Come on Rudy, come on Jesse Owens, wake up wake up wake up…."

I saw her fall forward onto his chest and hold him in her pain and disbelief. I turn away then, as everything breaks and the hot tears sting as they slide down my own face. I don't see her kiss him in vain. I don't need to.

_You killed them_.

I shake my head in disbelief as I lean against the remains of a brick wall that was once Frau Diller's shop. "That is the cost of war." I murmured. "Britain or America killed them. Not me. Why would I…"

_You had the opportunity to go against your leader, to stop him from starting this war in the first place. It could be done. France did it once. But you became drunk on the madman's vision and power, and now…_

I blinked and saw a portrait of Hitler, torn to shreds on the ground near the shop. It was fitting.

_So many dead. So many…_

"_Mein Gott_," I whispher, burying my head in my hands. "What have I done?"


End file.
